Room of Memory
by Cygna-hime
Summary: Just a few remembrances of times past, as they might drift in the air of a room unlike any other. Studying, creation, and relaxing. Genfic.


**Okay, I hereby issue a screwiness warning: This was written under the influence of a) a manic plotbunny and b)my own Tsukimineshrine challenge. Said challenge states the following:**

**Genre and canon by choice, rated G to PG-13, one week time limit and all that standard stuff.**

**500 words or more**

**Challenge Topic: 'Study'**

**Stuff: Mention glass or glasses, a library, and some work of literature. Contain a quotation of some kind.**

**Yeah, I know. Very odd. All my challenges are coming out to be rather mythic/classical. Blame my current course of literature and freakish Iliad obsession.**

**If I were CLAMP, a manga version of The Iliad would be in production right now. Is it? No? No. Still not CLAMP.**

Room of Memory

            This is a room unlike any other. Steeped in magic, surrounded by spells, it has become like the wet sand above the tide on which is printed the record of every coming and going it has ever seen. No waves come to wash the slate clean, no wind disturbs the hanging scents of rosemary and thyme. In this room fossils are made from fragments of remembrance, sunk deep between layers of the sands of time and frozen by some strange chance into its own peculiar, ephemeral stone. In this room one can see a glimpse of everything it ever held, one moment after another.

            The oldest layer first; it is the simplest. The desk's wood is polished fine, barely even scratched. The  rows and rows of shelves are mostly empty; boxes stand beneath, waiting to be unpacked. At the desk sits a shadow of a young man, in shirtsleeves and loose trousers. He scratches away at the paper with frenzied speed, his quill going scritch-scritch along the page. He was unpacking when an idea struck him like a thunderbolt, and now he struggles to write it down before it is lost forever. The sun glints, dying, through the high window behind him. When it sets he will light a candle with trembling fingers before returning to his frantic scrawling. Scritch-scritch, goes the quill, scritch-scritch.

            The next layer is more complicated, takes longer to understand. The young man is still there, or is there again, but the room is not the same. The books are all neatly shelved, their finely bound rows fit to rival those of any library in the world. The desk, the chair, the cabinets, all the furniture is pushed to the walls. Through the window a rare sight is visible; a round red sun hovers just above the horizon at the same time that a full moon hangs high in the twilit heavens.

            The young man is in the center of the room, facing both sun and moon. A strange scepter of gold, wrought by some cunning hand into the form of a compass rose, is held in his hand. The young man holds his staff before him as meaningless phrases in languages long dead tumble from his numb lips. The words will not avail him anything; all his hope, all his faith rides in the raw magic he forces through prepared pathways. Neither has ever failed him, nor will fail him now.

            His efforts are given form in two tiny bundles of feathers and fur that appear from some invisible direction to rest in the center of two carefully drawn circles on the dark oak floor. The young man smiles and sinks to his knees, gathering the small beings to him with trembling hands. Words fall from his mouth that, this time, have nothing to do with power or magic.

            " 'Intelligence fills their head, voice and strength their frames, from the deathless gods they've learned their works of hand,' " he breathes, the words a benediction. "O Hephaestus, Apollo and Artemis, what gifts you have bestowed upon me now!"

            The third layer floats up in glimpse after glimpse of sound and color. No single image is more solid than the last, but one such sample might look something like this:

            The room is full of books again. The high glass windows are now flung back, letting a spring breeze dust apple blossom over the occupants. The furniture is different; comfortable armchairs and footstools lean against the shelves, fine candelabra beside them. It is mid afternoon The young man is leaning back at his desk, glasses tilted up on his forehead, apparently staring at the ceiling. His face is as young as it ever was, but the fire in his eyes is old. He has the look of a young man who has been young for a very long time. In one of the plump armchairs is curled a mostly human form, so entranced by the book propped on one arm of the chair that he might be no more than a marble statue. He glances up, though, and questions the young man.

            "Clow? Could you explain this? It doesn't make any sense." The young man—Clow is apparently his name—returns from his reverie.

            "Does it have to? For that matter, does anything make sense in—what are you reading?"

            "Homer, The Iliad. I'm barely halfway through, and the phrase 'wine-dark sea' has shown up at least half a dozen times already. Apparently that's all there is to say about the sea, that it's wine-dark."

            "Well? A trifle repetitive it may be, but I wouldn't say it was confusing." The annoyed reader shakes his head vehemently.

            "That's not the problem. But _why_ does he say that at all? Wine isn't the same color as the sea unless you can get blue wine in Greece. I mean, he was blind, but-" Clow laughs.

            "Yue, Yue, Yue," he says, shaking his head, "what am I going to do with you? How do I go about explaining the mind of a long-dead poet when I, quite frankly, haven't the faintest idea what he was thinking myself? I'm not omniscient, you know."

            "Well, what do you think?" Yue says.

            "Pers'nally," a voice drifts in from the next room, "I bet Homer just came up with a really neat catchphrase and used it everywhere 'cause it sounded good. Doesn't have to mean anything." A winged lion pads sedately into the room and flops down across Clow's feet. Yue looks affronted.

            "Everything means something!" The leonine creature lifts its head lazily.

            "Oh? For example?"

            "For example, Keroberos," begins Yue, "the way you speak means that you're too lazy to bother pronouncing words correctly. For another example-"

            "Hey! Wait just a minute!"

            The conversation quickly degenerates into a battle of insults. Clow smiles benignly and returns to his deep contemplation of the ceiling.

            Other tiers of preserved memories still lie dormant, waiting for someone to enter and disturb them, set them free in the watcher's mind. Let them be, preserved for some future entrant to see and laugh and cry with. After all, this room is a room like no other, and it would be foolish to hoard the past as though it were gold. It is time to return to the present and leave the past lie. Simply step back outside and close the door…

_The End_

**I wrote the history of a room. I need help.**

**Quote (layer 2): The Iliad, Book 18, lines 490-91, Fagles translation.**

**Yes, I am on an Iliad-obsessed kick, why do you ask?**

**I'm not as pleased with the last half as I am with the first. I had to go to a friend's house in between. But they'll do fine.**

**If I had more time, I'd add to this, but I don't, so I won't.**

**Which half do you like better, start-layer 2 or layer 3-end? I'd appreciate your opinion!**


End file.
